


I don’t want to die without you.

by aleclightnerd



Series: Malec Drabbles [7]
Category: The Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-21
Updated: 2015-06-21
Packaged: 2019-07-20 05:22:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16130498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aleclightnerd/pseuds/aleclightnerd
Summary: Magnus and Alec have many differenties - one of them being their mortality. Alec is worried about it, and brings the subect up at many times. What does death mean to those who time does not touch?One-shot that takes place during a long time. Malec, fluff, angst and mentions of character death.





	I don’t want to die without you.

“What do you think it’s like to die?”   
The first time Alec brings the subject up is on a tuesday morning, as Magnus stands in the kitchen making waffles. The sun is shining, and even though it is way too early to be out of bed, Magnus is still smiling. Singing, even. Off key and it is unclear what song he’s singing, but it is peaceful. Magus’s soft voice in the kitchen as the smell of waffles slowly filling the air.

“Like eating some great waffles, maybe?” Magnus says, not really thinking that Alec would want a serious answer. Because how would Magnus know? He’s old, and even though he has known so many people that now are dead, none of them got the chance of telling him before it was too late. He places two plates on the table with waffles on each of them, thinking that the conversation is over.

“No, Magnus, I’m serious.” Alec says, and Magnus catches his eyes. Blue, innocent, but now filled with wonder as well. Not fear. Another strange thing about Shadowhunters. They are so close to death, but still they don’t seem to fear death. Most of them seemed to enjoy living on the edge - and some of them definitely had a deathwish. But not Alec. Still, he did not seem to fear death.

“Well sorry love, I have very little experience in dying,” Magnus says, blinking away the memories of those times he actually had been close to dying. Those times were not many, and he counted one of them as the time Chairman Meow had slept on his face and almost suffocated him, but that did not make them less haunting. The one with the cat would probably the most pleasant way to go, out of the alternatives he had been offered this far. Less pleasantly was his head pressed under water, desperate tries to breathe, silence.

“The worst thing, really, must be the way you go,” Alec says, clearly thinking out loud.

“Probably,” Magnus answers, sitting down by the table. “But let’s not think about that now, there are waffles waiting.”

Alec smiles at him and the subject is forgotten. But Magnus has a feeling that this conversation isn’t over. Not nearly over.

.

The second time the subject is brought up, it is actually Magnus who starts it. Accidentally, but it is still his fault to why they talk about it.

“God, I’d die for those shoes,” he says in admiration while browsing through a magazine. He doesn’t think of it, it’s just words coming out of his mouth. It doesn’t mean anything. He knows that if he had the choice, die and get the shoes, or live and don’t get the shoes, he would choose the second option. Obviously. But it’s just something he says.   
“Would you, really?" Alec says, from the other end of the cough where he is lying, reading. He is probably reading a bad book, because usually it is impossible to reach him while he’s reading. He gets into his own little bubble.

“Look at them, though,” Magnus says, avoiding Alec’s question without really thinking about it. To him death’s so far away. He says it as a price he’d be willing to pay for a pair of shoes, while to Alec a life is worth so much more. In that moment, Magnus doesn’t understand the difference in the way they think. He just talks. About shoes.

He feels Alec’s blue eyes at him, questioning him. He really wants an answer to it.

“Would you die for a pair of shoes?” he asks, and Magnus uses a second to look at him, then he stares down into the magazine again.

“No, I wouldn’t. Not really.” He turns a page in the magazine, and Alec drops the subject.

“Would you die for a greater cause?” Alec asks, and Magnus stops moving for a second. His hand holds a tight grip of Alec’s hair, that he before was playing with. He is thinking. Would he? He would not sacrifice himself, but surely, he could accidentally die while doing something for a greater cause. But he would not choose to do so.

“No,” he whispers, and he feels ashamed to do so. Because he wants to answer yes. That would sound better. He would be willing to sacrifice things, to fight for a greater cause, but not die. He would not jump in front of a bullet to save a nation. He wished he would, but he would not. And he cannot lie to Alec.

“I would,” Alec whispers back, slowly stroking Magnus’s leg. “As a shadowhunter, I think I’m obligated to,” he continues. He doesn’t sound scared, but he does sound small. Like a tiny soldier in an army of millions, a soldier who doesn’t really want to be there. But Magnus knows that he is overthinking it. He know how proud Alec is to be a shadowhunter.

The conversation ends when Alec falls asleep in his arms. Magnus doesn’t fall asleep until late that night.

After that, Alec drops comments about death and how mortal everyone, except the nearly or fully immortal, are. During dinner, on walks, at night when they are asleep. While Magnus is working, or when Alec gets back after a hunt. After a while it gets annoying. And also worrying. It isn’t until one night, a cloudy wednesday, that the bomb drops.

Somehow, talking turns into screaming.

Later, Magnus doesn’t remember what they were fighting about from the beginning. He only remembers when Alec cry out, his face red from screaming and crying, and the seconds after that.   
“I don’t want to be another person you forget the second I die!” he says. And finally, Magnus gets it. Alec isn’t afraid of dying. He does not look forward to the moment his time is over, but he does not fear it. What he fear is leaving this world forgotten. And later, Magnus will wish that he had told him the truth: that he could never ever forget about Alec. He had not forgotten about the lovers from his past, either, but he simply knows, from throwing a gaze at Alec, that he could never forget those blue eyes, looking back at him. But what he instead says in that moment is something he lives to regret, and something that causes Alec to leave his apartment in the middle of the night to take the train away from Brooklyn.

.

“Would you die for me?” The question is low, asked so quietly that Magnus isn’t sure Alec wants an answer. But when he glances over at his boyfriend, lying next to him in bed, staring up at the ceiling, he knows that he means it. He wants to know. Magnus looks at him for a moment, his cat shaped pupils allowing him to take in more light. Alec doesn’t even notice that Magnus is watching him, his well trained shadowhunter senses does not notice it.   
Yes, Magnus thinks, and lets his eyes slide over Alec’s forehead. He watches the pale skin and the messy dark hair falling in stripes over it. He then watches his nose. It is beautiful, even though it probably has taken a few punches. Then he watches Alec’s lips. Magnus remembers how they taste, and he could taste them right now, but he doesn’t want to startle Alec. He looks so peaceful, lips slightly open as he breathe in and out. Then, at last, Magnus stares into Alec’s eyes. Eyes that still are watching the ceiling, unaware of the golden green eyes staring into them.

“Alexander Gideon Lightwood,” Magnus says and regrets it the moment he utters the shadowhunter’s name because he sounds like a damn romantic. But when Alec gazes up on him, his eyes not fully catching Magnus’s face, the regret disappears. Alec’s eyes are searching for Magnus, his whole body looking tense and worried. And Magnus can’t stand that, can’t stand watching the person who might just be the love of his life (if he allows him to be just that) looking so anxious.

He lowers himself and kisses Alec on his arm (because he moves too much and Magnus doesn’t want to accidentally bump into Alec’s nose and cause him to have another nosebleed. He got one the other day, and dripped blood on Chairman Meow. Alec got nosebleeds easily, at least if he was stressed or hit his nose. And nosebleed had a tendency of ruining the good mood.).

Then he says it. He feels his heart race, because what if Alec would not say the same thing back? And it feels stupid, Magnus knows the word, just a single one, he thought it just moments before but somehow it gets stuck in his throat, as if it would be a lie. But it’s not a lie. It is honest - way too honest for Magnus’s taste - and he’s saying it.

“Yes, I would die for you. I really think I would.”

And Alec beside him moves, curls up next to him like a cat and just when Magnus thinks that he’s asleep, he whispers: “I would, too, you know.”

.

At one point, years and years later, Magnus thinks back to that moment. And he knows that what Alec said that time is true. Alec who kissed him in front of his whole family, all of his friends, who could hate him for that kiss. Alec who went to hell for him. Alec who told him that he’d rather have him than the rest of the world - a choice no shadowhunter should make. Alec who told him he loved him. Alec who proposed to him. Alec who took home a pair of abandoned kittens and let them live in their loft. Alec who played with the adopted warlock child. Alec who married him. Alec who lived long enough to see his sister’s children grow up. Alec who later died while protecting his family. Alec who was burned the shadowhunter way. Alec whom Magnus never will forget.

He feels a tear fall down his cheek. The last time Alec brought death up was years before he actually died. They had been sitting outside, in the sunlight, while their child was playing with Isabelle’s daughter, and Alec had said: “I love this life too much to ever want to let it go. Do you think that’s selfish of me?” Magnus had stared at him for a moment before laughing at his husband, who had been scarred by the forty years he had lived at the moment. Then he had stared down on his hands, who still belonged to a man who looked like he was in his early twenties. Hands that had not aged a day. “Love, I’ve rolled this life for hundreds of years, and I’m still not willing to let it go. I don’t think I ever will be. That’s not selfish, that is..” he had watched their kid, running after Isabelle’s daughter, laughing. “human,” he had ended his sentence with, eyes leaving the kids and instead focusing on the man in front of him.

Magnus had known that he never would feel fully human. But in moments like that when he was with Alec, he felt as human as he’d ever be. That was over now.

“Dad, let’s go. We can come back visit dad another time,” a grown voice says beside him. The warlock, their child, is standing there, eighty years old, holding his hand out for Magnus to take it.

“Yes, we can,” Magnus answers, smiling at his child. “He will be here forever. As it should be.”

Before leaving the cold stone that had been put up as a memorial for Alexander Lightwood, as a way to show his braveness of dying in battle, Magnus sits down beside it for a moment. He lays his hand on the flat surface and whispers: “I don’t want to die without you.”

He knows what it means. He hopes that Alec, wherever he is, does to. Magnus will never die. Because if he doesn’t die for Alec, what is the point?

He stands up, brushes the dust of his pants and turns to their child.   
“Let’s go,” he says. 


End file.
